STARTING ON THE OTHER SIDE

Darrell got up early and made this case to house my fabric collection.
I've purchased a metal basket drawer system to store it in.
This box will hold the basket drawers.

 Those are the some of the baskets on the right.  Again, the studio is in a state of disorder, to say the least.

EXPERIMENTING WITH LINE

I thinned down some black acrylic paint and had some fun making 'lines'.


Looking around the studio, I thought there was not much to choose from, but looking at the results, I think the experiment was very successful.  I made a variety of lines using just whatever was available.


I highly recommend you try this yourself!

Cellulose Sponge

My morning Starbucks drink straw.

I took a little strip of fabric and rolled it up and dobbed it in the paint, that's on the left.  In the middle, is the same fabric roll after I frayed it with an Exacto knife.  On the right, a cap off my acrylic paint tube.

A Hammer, the harder I hit the more interesting the mark.

A strip of Linoleum with a Jute backing.

Paint Brush.

A Phillips Screw Driver, the Drink Straw with a cut-tip, and a piece of String.

A Putty Knife.

A Screw (I like the little circles).

A Pointed Stick, Small Pallet Knife, Rubber Tip for Pastels.

A Rubber Finger-tip, a Fork.

A Stem on the left, and a Leaf.

My Valentine's Day Rose....

and then I cut the tip of the rose off, and dipped it in the paint and rubbed it on the paper.  You can kind of see the red on the paper.  Then I used it as a stamp.  

So much fun to be had with just the stuff on hand!

A DAY OF SNITZELING

Here's my second line drawing Snitzel (yeah, I know, I said I'd do this one last!).  I went with this one because I had done the page of little colored drawings.  So, throwing dignity away I jumped right it.  I went to all the trouble to cut each piece out of freezer paper, then fold the seam allowance around to the back and iron it down.  My poor cooked fingers.
Afterward, I was thinking, why am I doing so much work!?  Especially on one I don't even like that much.  It also took way too much time, and I still have to sew it down.  I'm leaving it in this condition until it gets critiqued in this weekend's class.

And, on to the next one:

I've been thinking about this one a long time.  I had definite ideas.  I had a little piece of canvas left over.  I mixed up some black acrylic paint with GAC900, the fabric additive.  It dried overnight and then you have to iron it (or heat it) to set the acrylic into the fabric, making it pliable and sewable.

I gathered my solid-like Batiks that are light colored and set to work.

I realized this exercise is all about the LINE.  I think this one emphasizes the line.  At the moment, the pieces are just spot glued to the canvas.  I'm still thinking about which direction to take it from here.  I have several ideas.

VALENTINE'S DAY FLOWERS

Here's my first draft of the Valentine's Day flowers my dear husband Darrell got me.

It's an annual thing.

I'm not happy with a few things.  It needs tweaking.

NEXT DAY:

Here it is, after I tweaked it:

Yes, I did change the background color.

SNITZELS - MORE FUN WITH COLOR

I've made progress on my Snitzel work this week.

I did some more colored-pencil work this past weekend on two of the other drawings.

I also finished up the Boots drawing in fabric.  It's funny, I spend all this time with the little color drawings as above, and I don't have the fabrics to make it in.  I need a trip to the fabric store.

Going with the fabrics closest to the color drawings (although, most all of my fabrics have 'patterns') I used Freezer Paper, cut out the shapes, and ironed the seam allowance around to the backside of the freezer paper, where it would stick it.  The original plan was to hand sew the pieces together.  Its been a long time since I did any applique, so I was a little rusty.  

Today, I took the remaining pieces to the sewing machine and zigzagged them together.  

Having fun.

FUN WITH COLOR

I scanned my line drawings in Photoshop and pasted a bunch of little ones on a sheet of paper.  I can print out as many blanks as I need....

Here's the first one of the Boot that I colored.  I'm only limited by colored pencils and fabric availability.

This is great fun!  Something I can do in spare moments.

SNITZELS - SPACE REDO

After receiving some very helpful critiques in class, I'm re-doing these last few Snitzels.

They thought the Boxes was too boring, I agree.  It was just the beginning.  It needed definition and focus.  So I cut out the basic shape and bordered it with an interesting black with colored lines fabric.  I used a Pigma pen to draw the perspective lines in, as this had been my plan all along.  I just couldn't decide whether to do it in pen or on the sewing machine with thread.  I went with the pen because I figured I wouldn't be able to get really straight lines on the machine.  I glued the pieces down with Roxanne's Glue Baste-It.  I love the little applicator tip, it's very handy. I had to learn not to squeeze too hard, because the tip is so small, the glue is forced out around the cap.  Unfortunately, I went a little nuts with the glue, putting little dots everywhere on the back, and I ended up with little dots soaked through to the front of the fabric.

I then tried out a bunch of different fabrics to 'square' it up with:

This was fun!  Now I just have to figure out which one, and how to cut it out and sew it on.  Hmmm.

The Drops is giving me fits.  I don't like the way it looks.  I'm frustrated trying to make the 'drops' look spherical and drop-like.  Jean (the teacher) suggested that I make the whole thing smaller, which is the first step.  I cut down the background and then started over making the drops.  I decided to make them all from the same fabrics.  I went back to my original photo and really looked at it and started again.

Here is where I ended up.  I'm liking it a little more.  I think what I want to do now is gradate the transition from one fabric to the next using a zigzag thread technique with gray threads.  I want to show it to the class the way it is first, though, to get their opinions.